Kerry Rood-Rourke took this picture July 12 near the marina on Coates Island in Colchester, where her family lives in the summer.

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Free Press Staff Writer

COATES ISLAND — One hundred and forty years ago, William and Adeline Coates paid $1,617 to purchase an island in Malletts Bay. On a recent Friday night David Coates, great-grandson of William and Adeline, paid twice that amount to celebrate island life.

David Coates threw a party — wood-fired pizza, pasta, meatballs, salads, beer and wine — to mark the many decades his family has lived on and cared for Coates Island. The party-goers included eight generations of Coateses — meet Nathaniel Cowenhoven, 3½ years, and brother, William, 5 months — and scores of seasonal residents.

The summer people come year after year, generation after generation, to the island that is eight miles from downtown Burlington, but a lifetime away. On Coates Island, summer rolls along in an easy kind of way — swimming and reading in the hammock; fishing and building forts; sharing secrets with friends and traditions with family.

With heartfelt speeches, warm conversation, piles of food, and a rousing rendition of “God Bless America” — traditions, memories, and hopes for an island future much like its past were celebrated at the 140th birthday bash in mid-July.

“Tonight was very, very nostalgic,” said Sarah Coates, 32, mother of Nathaniel and William. As a child, she played in the big field where kids kicked balls by the party tent. As an adult, she was married in the field. Sarah Coates grew up on the island, living in one of the handful of year-round homes.

“You’re part of the town and you come home and you’re in the middle of nowhere,” Sarah Coates said.

The island is owned by a Coates family trust and an estate that will pass into the the trust. Coates Island is home to 36 seasonal camps and four-year round homes, according to David Coates. Camp and home owners lease the land from the family-owned trust.

“It’s our own little paradise,” said David Coates, who lives with his wife, Margaret, in a year-round house.

A causeway built by David Coates’s grandfather, William, connects the island to the mainland. To cross the causeway from the parcel of land that juts into Malletts Bay is to wind down, slow down, wave to neighbors and savor the summer.

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“There’s nothing better than getting up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning for that sunrise,” said Cricket Laidman, who owns a camp with her husband, Bob. “In my mind, it’s like stepping back in time. Just the friendliness here. It’s like we’re one big family.”

William Coates, affectionately known as Gompy, also built the first home on the island, an 1896 farmhouse. His great-grandson, David Coates Jr., lives in that house now — most of the year. When the weather turns warm, David Jr. moves from the big farmhouse to his family’s seasonal camp on the shoreline. In the summer home, Gompy’s tools hang on the wall, such as the scythe he used to mow fields, his fishing lures.

David Coates Jr., 43, said he leaves his worries behind, the stresses of the day, when he crosses the causeway. His father, who turned 75 in May, voiced a similar sentiment.

“When you get here, it’s a different place,” David Coates said. “You leave everything on the other side of the causeway. When you get here, your mind becomes clear.”

He experienced a different kind of clarity on his 75th birthday, when Coates took a ride in a hot air balloon, and hung for a time above his family’s island, looking down. From the sky, he glimpsed a sense of the island’s past — and his hope for its future.

“We could see everything,” David Coates said. “There was only one camp in the last 50 years built on Coates Island. It’s the way our forefathers and foremothers would’ve wanted it.”

The day before the 140th anniversary party, David Coates recalled childhood days with Gompy, who called his grandson King David. David Coates remembered the winter he was 4 years old, and lived year-round in the family’s seasonal camp on Coates Island. Gompy came by every day to make sure things were running OK, sometimes driving across a stretch frozen lake to get there, David Coates said.

“He was the most impressive man I ever met, he was my role model,” David Coates said. Gompy instilled values in David Coates that guide the grandson to this day.

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They are:

Stewardship of Coates Island

Hard work

Keep your word

“Gompy lived off the land,” David Coates said, remembering his grandfather traveling by horse-drawn wagon to work in his garden. “He was a visionary and an entrepreneur.”

Dirt roads posted with 10 mph speed limits traverse the 68-acre island, which is dotted with some 40 seasonal camps. Many of these have been home to one family for generations.

Quiet time

Walking around the island one afternoon, I ran into a couple of island old-timers: Clem Holden, 89, and his wife Sylvia Heininger Holden, 83. We met on a dead-end dirt road on the far side of the island, where they were delivering a zucchini to family members.

The Holdens invited me visit their camp, a bungalow hidden in the trees at water’s edge. The wooden camp with two porches — one screened, one open — has been in the Heininger family since 1946. “We’ve had the opportunity to be here so many many years,” Holden said. “It’s priceless.”

She grew up in Burlington, the daughter of an attorney who served in the state legislature, and remembers her parents always talked about acquiring a summer camp on the lake. She had all but given up on the prospect when one year —while she was away at summer camp — it became so.

“I came back and it was a done thing,” she recalled. “I was very pleased. I didn’t have to go camp anymore — and it’s

the best place on the island.”

Her parents, who used to take walks on the island, knew “Mr. Coates,” as she called Gompy.

“That’s probably how we’ve been able to preserve the island,” she said. “That it was in the Coates’ hands.”

They’ve preserved close to its original form, as well, their camp — built almost 100 years ago. There is no hot water but there is a Victrola, with a 78 rpm Woody Herman record on the turntable. The bathtub is tin, resting in a wood-frame box. They haul drinking water in old maple syrup jugs.

“The minute you come on the island you think, now we’ll slow down,” Sylvia Holden said. “You think, now we’ll be quiet.”

The Holdens made a modification related to advancing age: An alternate walkway, mildly graded and with a rope hand- hold, from the car park to the house. This landscaping gem, the work of Gardiner Lane, a builder of back-country ski trails, complements a stone stairway crafted from the home’s dismantled fireplace.

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In spite of occasional “architectural grumps,” in the words of Sylvia Holden, the overarching effort has been to retain the original character of the camp. The couple planned a swim before lunch, an activity Clem Holden aims for before every meal. “At 7 in the morning,” he said, “you don’t need a bathing suit.”

Dick Wilber, 71, has summered at Coates Island his whole life, at the camp his family established in 1920. His grandfather, John Wilber, dismantled a rental duplex in Burlington and moved it to Coates Island. From a bed on a sleeping porch he drifted off to sleep listening to the sounds from a Colchester jazz club. One night, it was Louis Armstrong playing as night fell on the island, Wilber said.

In his teens, he and a buddy pitched a tent in the grass and slept outside all summer. It was a place to come to rest after a day spent outdoors — fishing, biking and swimming — taking off all day, relishing the freedom of making your own fun in the beauty and quiet of a Vermont summer.

“It was just beautiful,” Wilber said. “Here we were on this island, eight miles from Burlington. Today, with the hustle and bustle, it’s still the same as it was then.”

Still, real life with its attendant complexities can infiltrate the island: these days that comes in the form of litigation over taxes, an issue that was mentioned by residents in conversation, and by Sean O’Brien, president of the campers’ association, at the anniversary party.

Taxes and property assessments received minor mention by O’Brien - a speech that was mostly a tribute to the place where memories are made, and to the family responsible for its stewardship.

“We believe the island ... is a perfect example of what is possible if a family remains devoted and committed to something they love and respect,” O’Brien said.

Shelby Losier, 18, a member of that family, is a 2012 graduate of Milton High School soon to start at the University of Vermont. Coates Island has her love and respect.

“It’s really a place to call your own,” Losier said. “You know no one can ever invade your space. You come here, you pass somebody and they wave to you. It’s a place of comfort, friendship and happiness. You can’t feel anything but happy.”